“Perhaps they have a right to some of Uncle Peter’s property. We don’t know.”
“I don’t believe it! She’s the sort of a person—that Mrs. Trouble—who assumes rights wherever she goes.”
Ruth had to confess that Mrs. Treble was trying. She criticised Mrs. McCall’s cooking and the quantity of food on the table at luncheon. Lillie did not like dried apple pies, and said so bluntly, with a hostile glare at the dessert in question.
“Well, little girl,” said Mrs. McCall, “you’ll have to learn to like them. I’ve just bought quite a lot of dried apples and they’ve got to be eaten up.”
Lillie made another awful face—but her mother did not see it. Dot was so awe-stricken by these facial gymnastics of the strange girl that she could scarcely eat, and watched Lillie continually.
“That child ought to be cured of staring so,” remarked Mrs. Treble, frowning at Dot. “Or is her eyesight bad?”
Mrs. Treble was busy, after her trunks came, in unpacking them and arranging her room to suit herself—as though she expected to make a long visit. She had suggested appropriating Uncle Peter’s old bedroom in the front of the house, but that suite of rooms was locked, and Ruth refrained from telling her that she had the keys.
Meantime the bigger Corner House girls tried to help the smaller ones entertain Lillie. Lillie was not like any normal girl whom they had ever known. She wanted to do only things in which she could lead, and if she was denied her way in any particular, she “wouldn’t play” and threatened to go up stairs and tell her mother.
“Why,” said Agnes, first to become exasperated. “You want to be the whole show—including the drum-major at the head of the procession, and the little boys following the clown’s donkey-cart at the end!”
Lillie made a face.